5 Things to Leave Off Your Resume, According to Recruiters

There are any number of reasons a recruiter will call you in for a job (or not). For example, if you meet the recruiter at a job fair, the way you present in person will be equally as important as the one-page piece of paper that you’re counting on to express yourself and why you’re qualified for a position at the company.

Whether you’re applying for online jobs, submitting to job agencies, or applying to companies directly, résumés and CVs are still a fundamental way recruiters and hiring managers view your experience. They’re still important.

Here are five things recruiters (including one I interviewed from Accenture) wish you’d leave off your résumé:

Recruiters don’t care what your objective is. They care about whether you have the skills to get the job done. At best, including your objective can seem like a minor distraction; at worst, it can make you look immature or unrealistic. Getting rid of it also leaves room for you to include other things (or increase your font size).

If you’re applying to a job, the recruiter assumes you’d be willing to live in the place where the job is. People move around so much these days that it doesn’t really matter where you live, and they definitely don’t need to know your street address.

Your email address and phone number are sufficient in terms of contact information.

This is one of the biggest and most consistent complaints from recruiters. You don’t need to include everything you’ve ever done on your résumé–in fact, it’s distracting. It can also come off as strange, especially if it’s old or totally unrelated experience.

If you’re applying for a job in the tech industry, for example, the recruiter doesn’t need to know that you worked at Applebee’s in high school. A good rule is to leave off anything about high school.

You also want to trim so your résumé isn’t too long. Unless you’re an executive or have extensive experience, your résumé should fit on one page. Take the time to streamline your résumé to solely the positions relevant to the job for which you’re applying. Less really is more.

According to a recruiter from Accenture in the U.S., including a photo of yourself can come off as unprofessional. Plus, it takes away from the function of a résumé, which is to narrow down applicants to those most capable to do the job. Exceptions to this: regions where it’s customary to include a photograph (India and parts of Europe).

This is on every list of résumé tips ever for a reason: It makes you look bad. Because you comb through your résumé so many times yourself, it’s a really good idea to have someone else look over your final version. You want to make absolutely sure you don’t have any grammar mistakes or misspelled words on your résumé, period.